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Don’t we know it that boys despise being labeled a “Mama’s Boy?” Yet a research conducted in Pittsburgh shows that “boys who have had lots of conflict with their mothers were more likely to engage in delinquent behavior as teens, while boys who had a close relationship with their mothers were more likely to have a good relationship with their best friends when they became teens.”

This study was made on more than 250 mother-son pairs, from when the son was five years old up to his adolescence. Besides the mother-son relationship, it also looked at other aspects like temperament, behavior, relationship of mother and her husband or partner, and even parenting style.

Another study conducted by Dr Pasco Fearon, from the School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, looked at 69 studies involving almost 6,000 children aged 12 and younger. This research from the University of Reading says a similar thing: children, especially boys, who have insecure attachments to their mothers in the early years have more behaviour problems later in childhood.

A mother and son relationship is a very unique one, writes suite101.com. Boys generally look up and to their fathers or a father-figure for counsel, advise and companionship. However, a mother’s guidance is warmth, patience and compassion, to name a few, that provide boys their natural abilities to interact with girls properly and correctly. This helps boys have better relationships with women when they grow up as men.

However, when boys and teens grow up to be adults or “men,” they are more likely to confess to a predilection for pornography than admit to a close relationship with their mother. Geographic culture and courtships dispell manlihood and marital bliss, that is, women may run a thousand miles away from a man who loves his mother just too much.

It’s a different story when a man becomes a father. His mother is now a grandmother and everything about their relationship is transformed. If there has been any separation, this is now reversed. The mother who lost his boy and teenager to becoming a man is now getting back her boy as the grandmother to his son or daughter.

My kids enrolled in Kumon only when we moved to Canada, Richmond, BC, to be precise. Both complemented their weaknesses and strengths – my daughter was good in reading but weak in math while my son was the reverse. They each enrolled only with the weak subject matter and in a year’s time, both decided to also enroll with the other. In time, their proficiencies increased dramatically.

What is Kumon? In an ordinary man’s description, I can say its method is to keep repeating items to the student over and over again. I used to look at the math portions of my kids and saw that the daily homework consisted of doing things repeatedly. For example, randomly placed, equations that equaled to, say, eleven, were all over the assignment sheets – 5+6, 7+4, 2+9, 15-4, 19-8, and so on.

What does the child get? I’d say the repetition force their young mind to develop senses of quick answers to problems and the habit of homework. Don’t you see how many kids dread homework? The habit of daily homework enforced by Kumon will eventually run in your kids’ blood that by the time they get too many, it’s not a big effort for them anymore.

I’m sure the Kumon experts can describe the method in a better way. Just the same, you can’t just snub it as a fad or something that might not work for your child. Go and take a look into it, let your children try it out for about four or six months before you tell yourself this isn’t for your kids.

Attend the Kumon seminar on June 18, 2011, at the SM Mall of Asia, Cinema 6. Make sure to reserve your seat lest you won’t be able to come in after a long drive to the venue.

Excerpt from a Q&A By Andrea Sachs with Michelle Anthony, a developmental psychologist and the co-author (with Reyna Lindert) of ‘Little Girls Can Be Mean: Four Steps to Bully-Proof Girls in the Early Grades’

Is there a common misperception that this only happens when kids get older?
Exactly, that this is a problem that only comes to light in middle school and high school. The reality is that the roots are all in elementary school. Girls as young as kindergarten are facing significant social challenges without the resources, without the tools and most important, without the support to best manage them.

Do most daughters tell their parents that something is going on?
Sometimes. When it gets bad enough, they usually do. And if they don’t, parents — especially parents who are taught to recognize shifts in their children — will begin to notice changes. More often than girls coming and saying, “I have this big problem,” you’ll see shifts in behavior. They’ll stop liking things they used to like, or they’ll start complaining about headaches or stomachaches more, or that they don’t like [a particular] class, because that’s where these things are happening. When girls come home, there are sort of codes that they use: “She was mean” — that’s a very common phrase for a child to use — or, “My friend and I got in a fight.”

There are already 503 barangays in Antique that have Responsible Parenting Movement (PRM) Teams and that the head of the Provincial Population Office, Primo Ogatis, have already conducted 525 RPM-NFP classes and had trained 7,595 couples. PRM aims to help couples and parents exercise responsible parenting and to reduce infant, child and maternal mortality.

In addition, Ogatis bared that his office also reached out to the young Antiquenos and conducted orientation on Adolescent Health and Youth Development Program (AHYDP). Through this, they are able to help the youth to exercise responsible sexuality, thereby reducing the incidence of teenage pregnancies, early marriages, sexually transmitted infections and other psycho-social concerns.

Purchase 20 or 25 Peso “Study Kits,” put your name on the tag and drop them in the boxes provided in National Bookstore branches. Runs from October 10 up to 24, 2009. But, it’s not the price that’s interesting — it’s the promo that now allows your kids or young children to do their part in the adult world of volunteering, charity and donating.

Here’s something National Bookstore is giving parents of young kids to feel proud that they can literally help the victims of typhoon Ondoy. You can tell them that you’re going to remove 20 or 25 Pesos (or more, if possible) from their allowance or a little portion of their coming birthday or Christmas gift. Give them the money, bring them to any National Bookstore branch and have them pick out the study kits, paying the money they are holding to the cashier. Let them write down their name on the tag and point them where they could drop these kits.

Parents in the United States are setting a poor example behind the wheel for their teenaged children by talking and texting on cell phones and speeding, according to a Reuters article.

“Nearly 60 percent of 500 parents with teenage children questioned surveyed admitted that they chatted on their cells while driving. Forty-two percent said they were guilty of speeding and 17 percent sent a text or email. Another 40 percent listened to loud music while driving.”